What a bunch of snobs are profiled in this article. The immigrants from southern Italy were peasants who came and created a magnificent food tradition I love all kinds of Italian food, but I have a special place in my heart for the peasant food of the Italian Americas, they left Italy and never looked back, for good reason, their birth country treated them like dirt. Know what is the most popular food in America? Southern Italian! Although I don't eat veal, I'd love me some well made eggplant parm. There is skill in those lowly ingredients.
6
Is Italian cooking a living tradition or a form of ancestor worship?
Some version of this question shows up in many different contexts: "authentic Mexican versus Tex-Mex", the outrage when Bob Dylan went electric at Newport, the living constitution vs. originalism or literalism. I have long said (or thought) to those who would say things such as spaghetti and Meatballs is not authentic Italian food, well it's authentic Italian-American food. The important thing to me is, is it good to eat? I see no need to obey our ancestors, but sometimes, if they are re-introduced after having been forgotten, they can teach us something of value that we can use today.
5
The tomato is a New World fruit. It seems apropos that it became an essential ingredient in much Italian-American cuisine. Italian cuisine is essentially about resources - what is available. The question: 'What is for dinner?' and the response: 'What there is' pretty much sums it up.
3
Can you trust an article that does not even mention Mezzaluna? Is the excuse that it is a trattoria rather than a ristorante?
1
I don't need a baseball-capped chef coming out to my table to stroke his own ego. Please recognize the difference between front of house and back of house, especially when your customers are dressed to the nines. This chef as celebrity nonsense has to stop.
6
Italians are not easy-going about anything, especially food. I have lived among them all my life, in Italy and the US. Each has their own idea of the "correct" way to do things, and no accademia is going to tell them otherwise.
2
In the 1970s we had dinner at Caeserina in Rome. That was before it was for celebrities. The minestrone soup was heavenly...it contained freshly ground fava bean and the usual elbow macaroni....I can still taste it. Francesco's Pizzeria on Columbus Avenue makes a great minestrone too. You never know when you are going to hit it just right. Then the spaghetti carbonara Florentine style at Pappardella UWS NYC I find more satisfying than anything I ate in Florence, Italy. There is plenty of good Italian style food here in NYC.
4
Traditional Italian cuisine and Italian American cuisine are two different things which developed in different environments. They're not competitors. In my community, Italian American cuisine, in all of its varieties, is part of local history.
10
I appreciate Ms. Nierenberg's effort to acknowledge that "Many lovers of Italian food would strongly disagree" with the rarefied tastes of the accademici, who put Italian-American cuisine on a "rung" below Italian. Indeed, it is not a question of rungs, but of difference between two culinary traditions, neither inherently better than the other. But her description of this difference, which seems to reflect the snobbish disregard of the accademici, is wildly under-informed. Yes, Italian-American cuisine is the product of immigrants coming from "scarcity" and deploying their native traditions on "cheap cuts"of meat in the US. But it is much more than that; in fact, it is arguably a celebration of the bounty immigrants found in the US, where they could eat meat every day instead of just on feast days. It is also an exploration of the new and diverse foodstuffs they encountered in the US. And it is a combination of the many regional cuisines they brought here, coming into delicious contact with the many regional cuisines they found in the Northeast, the Midwest, New Orleans, and the West Coast. So, yes: American diners need to know that a gloppy pile of over-sauced veal parm passing itself off as "Italian" is not legit, but neither is turning away from the rich and varied cuisine the sons and daughters of Italy created--and are still creating--in the US.
19
@Rocco Marinaccio
They didn’t eat meat every day! But it’s true that immigrants from everywhere had an appreciation for good food that is lacking in the USA Today.
2
Can we trust Americans at guarding the sanctity of anything ?
8
Real Italian spaghetti sauce has fennel seed in it. New York pizza pie has provolone, mozzarella cheese and olive oil. End of story.
3
@Sophie, in our family never fennel! Last Christmas, I was mistakenly given a few links of fennel sausage with my sausage order. It went into the lasagne and people were not pleased! I guess it depends upon where in Italy one's family hales from. My mother-in-law's recipe (and family) were from Napoli.
I never tried provolone on pizza - but it could be interesting. Thanks for the tip!
7
@Maria
Exactly. That's the point--we all have our own variations. My mother put pignoli in her braccioli, her friend put raisins in hers.
@Sophie: Traditional Neapolitan pizza is made with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil--no provolone. There are many different toppings that can be used, but that is the traditional one. And no Italian would ever say "pizza pie"--it is redundant.
3
@Sophie
I hope you're not talking about sliced provolone, that is not Italian. That's a very sad replacement for the real stuff, the provolone that has been aged to perfection and that aroma. Never had a NY slice with provolone in my life.
3
as my first-generation italian/american father would often point out: there is a reason why there are so many excellent italian restaurants in places like london & berlin, but there are very few english or german restaurants in rome.
l'america, despite all its failed promises of late, nonetheless represents what i see as the future of what la cucina italiano is ultimately all about: constructing honest, healthful beauty from basic, local sources. to wit -- way back when i was forced to work in los angeles, california, some of the most innovative italian food i ate was created by mexican and salvadoran chefs. bless their hard-working hearts!
l' accademia might wish to re-read darwin.
12
Guarding the sanctity of Italian food ?
With a picture of a red snapper dish.
There are no red snapper in Italy . None in the mediterranean sea. One meal at a Time ? It is a good start .
That fish has absolutely nothing Italian.
It is from New Zeland or Asia.
16
@JPHhJust because Bronzino comes from the Mediterranean doesn’t make it Italian food... it’s how the food( Red snapper ) is ‘prepared’, that gives it sanctity not it’s indigenous source
As a first generation American with Italian born and raised parents, and as one fortunate enough to go to Italy every two or three years for extended stays since 1961, I can tell you that the core of all Italian cooking. whether from the North or South of the country, or in North America is HOMEMADE/HOME GROWN natural, seasonal foods (foraged if possible -wild mushrooms, quahoags /clams and other seafood), greens, tomatoes, grapes from the back yard garden - all cooked simply with excellent quality olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs (basil, parsley, fennel" spices: grated nutmeg, nuts (almonds, pistachio) with care and love for family and friends. ..no pretension about what genuine means. Buon Appetito !
34
@Isernia2
There's a certain chef in California who thinks she invented "seasonal" cooking. Ha!!
First generation Italian - Spanish - American as well. Growing up we didn't eat peaches in February we ate what was available, like my parents did when they were growing up. Never bought jarred sauce either and only use grated cheese that I grate myself. You can't go wrong when you start off any dish (to some extent) with beautiful extra virgin olive oil and garlic.
10
I agree with Mr Paradiso, the first time I visited the US I though that Italian-American cuisine was foreign. I grew up in Milano traveled extensively with my parents as boy up down the Italian peninsula, I kept on traveling as an adult for work and pleasure but I never heard of Pasta Primavera of Veal Parmesan.
Few years ago I visited Chicago, when I tasted deep dish pizza that some friends had sold me as "a classic" I got almost offended.
Sorry, nothing wrong with Accademia; for decades we had to listen to French defending their great cuisine.
18
@Celeste An Irish American friend is making lasagna with that yellow cheese that Americans buy in slices covered by plastic. She puts the ground beef uncooked in between the lasagna pasta sheets and that cheese. "My son loves it . It's so good ! "
4
@Celeste
What you say echoes what Chinese people who travel to this country say about the American version of Chinese food.
6
@JPH
After reading your comment my gorge was rising. Raw meat? Pure fat and no flavor. And American cheese. No, just no.
1
Nothing wrong with going to taste new restaurants if food is one of your passions, and can do so in good company! I’m curious to try out the restaurants recommended, I’ve been to one of the recommended restaurants and it was truly one of my favourite Italians.
What I don’t like is that the group exclusivity is not based on skills, passion or other criteria, but on other members’ introductions. This sounds exactly like the type of snobbery and nepotism that continues to stifle Italy.
17
I’ve had some remarkably innovative dishes in Italy,
I’ve had some beautiful traditional dishes in Italy.
If these folks are enjoying their club, good for them.
11
One can get excellent Italian food and terrible Italian food in unexpected places. I lived in Italy for many years. Very recently, I have had mediocre food in Rome and outstanding Italian food on a cruise ship off the Alaskan coast. One can no longer take any of this for granted. High standards are one thing. Preciousness is another.
25
Hey, Italy was not a country until the 1860's, so they should call the food by the province rather than by the country. So is every recipe in "Italy" exactly the same? If I run out of "A", and substitute "B", is it less authentic?
6
@Tom You are unable to think about regions because everything is the same anywhere in the USA . Mostly fast food chains.
In Italy, same as in France everything is different according to the regions, the soil, the sun, traditions, recipes, etc...
What do Americans know about traditions ?
Simply start to imagine that the wines are different according to regions , the cheeses, the way to make bread, pizzas, pasta, fish dishes, etc...
How difficult to think about that for the square minded...
3
@JPH
Oh, brother. Can you hear yourself?
Anyone who has traveled or lived in America and Europe can tell you that that there is no shortage of good or bad food anywhere on earth.
France is where I have stumbled on the most extraordinary food in the most ordinary and unexpected of places—a fresh fruit cocktail at the Louvre restaurant and a dish of classic beef bourguignon at the De Gaulle airport Holiday Inn are just two sublime examples.
6
@JPHAs if America doesn't have food that is regionally based from the New England clam bake, numerous different BBQ based differently from the Carolinas to KC, and Cajun and Creole food just to start with. The wealth of America has allowed regional foods to go national. Most places have local eating type places also not just chains. Again being a wealthy country we have the cash and time to eat out and support many choices.
4
Italian food in American will never taste like the food in Italy. Vegetables are grown in different soils and are not necessarily the same varieties as those in the Old Country, the FDA has criminalized the wonderful cured meats and real cheeses, and olive oil in this country is unreliable no matter what is says on the label.
19
@Judith There IS bad food in Italy. I've eaten it.
2
Italian food served in American Italian restaurants is Diaspora cooking. Few, if any, import all of the fresh ingredients. From reading this article it seems these people really should eat at their mothers house. I love the flavors of Italy. Food like life itself is ever-changing. Embrace the diversity and the opportunity to expand your world. However if only true authentic cuisine as it is found in Italy will suffice: move back to Italy. It's a beautiful place.
11
I understand why people are laughing in the comments here, but that is because many of us are Americans. I lived in Italy for several months, and tradition is taken very seriously there. It’s incredibly exasperating to an American where we prize efficiency and will easily toss a process or method if a better way is found, but Italians are very much rule sticklers and have this attitude of “we do it this way because that’s how it’s always been done.” For some things, yes, this can be incredibly annoying. But for others, I understand why they stick to tradition: it took ages to create the prestige behind the phrase “Made in Italy.”
29
@L No . You lived there but you did not understand anything.
It is not that we make it this way because that is how it has alway been made, but because there is a reason for it to be made that way.
And you never understood that reason or never made the effort to think past your American ready made culture.
Too bad for you.
4
@JPH
I think you misunderstood my comment. I absolutely love Italy and love the high quality of things made there. (I’ve been there 13 times.) That’s why I ended my comment the way I did — that this aspect of their culture is why “Made in Italy” carries so much cachet.
1
@L No. I don't think I misunderstood.
Many Americans think that French or Italian things or products are just as valuable as their labels.
Because of the established value. Over rated.
I think it is difficult for Americans to understand the reason for the value.
So happy this group exists.
7
Thank you for the article. A fascinating point of view on food.
Me, I eat, I do not dine.
4
One of your commenters pointed out that Italian people don’t eat in restaurants, they cook at home. That was true of my folks. By the way, if you’re interested, don’t cook dried pasta in more than a minimum of water. They’re done perfectly when the water is absorbed. And skip the white stuff, use or buy only the whole wheat or whole grain pasta; better for your looks.
3
@JGSD
May be better for our looks, but the taste? No thank you.
1
some years ago, my sister,Pat and I toured Sicily with a group of retirees. People were so surprised at our Luncheon "All you can eat, Sicilian style." We went down the long table naming the dish and its ingredients, capunatina,chick-pea with olive oil, etc. Everyone marveled at the different aromas and tastes. "you ate this as a child?!!" Pat and I laughed. We thought we ate poor, but who knew we ate gourmet. I tear when I remember the taste and smells of our mother's kitchen.
18
@Nancy Stehle Food in Sicily is the best. I was hiking there with a few others and there was a lot of grumbling about not enough meat and not enough sauce as they're used to American Italian food..
To me it was heaven.
3
@Nancy Stehle
It's Caponatina or Caponata. It's made from Melanzana, capers, tomatoes, onion.
Sorry, but there is nothing wrong about Veal (or Chicken, for that matter) Parmegana. Us 'peasants' will keep on eating the true Italian cuisine... as we see fit.
How ridiculously snooty and out of touch these people are. Ciao!
9
@geo
No there is nothing wrong about eating veal parm. But it isn't Italian. Veal yes. Veal parm? No.
2
I like veal parm.
6
I would love to hear Mario Carbone's and Rich Torrisi's thoughts on this "Accademia"
4
I also wonder if this critique on "Italian Food" covers the cuisine of Sicily, a very diverse island that had contributions from so many countries that invaded it. Sicilian food is in a category all by itself.
11
@Diane Steiner
Stayed for a time in Sicily, their cuisine is heavily influenced by the Moors. My mother's family came from Sicily. The variety though heavy on the veal can be quite amazing and varied.
3
It makes more sense to talk of the foods of Italy than to talk of Italian food. Waverley Root observed that a béarnaise sauce in France is the same everywhere, but a Bolognese will be different five kilometers down the road. Italians are food foragers and borrowers. The joy of food in Italy is its diversity. That a group of Americans has set themselves up as arbiters of culinary authenticity that takes points off for the green beans strikes me as nothing less than comical.
25
@Richard Frank Points were taken off because the green beans did not belong on the dish, they were superfluous.
@Richard Frank This is so true -- I have Waverly Root on my shelves too (falling apart from use over the years), and really, there is no such thing as one "Italian Cuisine."
Taking it a couple of steps further, you don't even need to travel 5 km to find variations -- how about just to the next neighborhood? How about just a couple of doors down to the next house and its kitchen? Yes some basic precepts do apply, e.g. no cheese or dairy in a dish with seafood and garlic, but nearly every rule does have exceptions, and innumerable variations. The final arbiter is the home cook herself in her own kitchen; for her alone to refine the details of technique that work best for her, and to improvise freely, with brilliance and her own imagination, based on the fresh ingredients available that day at the market, or in her own garden. Most of the great "classic Italian" chefs have been birthed out of this grand tradition -- and learned, from it, when to bend or break the "rules" and improvise into something new.
But not all improvisation is necessarily the right thing to do; hence, the quarrel about the green beans. The "Accademia" may be living in a sort of fantasy of grand Italian cuisine that many can't relate too -- red sauce can be glorious, yes, just not their field of focus or expertise -- but God bless them for upholding the standards they believe in!
PS Who says an Accademia is a French concept? An ancient Athenian thing, wasn't it? Reborn in Renaissance Italy.
4
@AC
I don't care what cuisine we're talking about. A meal is not complete without a vegetable. A potato doesn't count. And salad is not a vegetable.
3
Back in the 60’s when I lived in the city my first landlord and lady were from Italy: he from Sicily, she from Florence. She would a few times a month bring downstairs something for my dinner. It occasionally would include eggplant. I don't like eggplant, but hers was delicious.
When I explained that to folks at work and other places they would tell me "she peeled the eggplant" or "she soaked the eggplant in salt water." No she didn't. She sliced it, dipped it in milk, egg, Progresso seasoned salt and fried it. It was the only eggplants I've ever liked.
Mrs. Palermo could have opened a fried eggplant stand and cleaned up. (It's like people who can make perfect piecrust.) If the Italian Food guardians ever find her, they should hire her to make fried eggplant .
16
@Joan In California
Back in the 60's you were 50 years younger, inyour first experiece living in New York. A Nedick's hot dog--gross!--probably seemed like a treat back then.
Try flour-egg-cornmeal, with salt and pepper. Call it a bit of Betty Botta's better batter.
1
The reason why the cuisines -- note the plural; there are many -- of Italy are so dynamic is because they are constantly evolving. Are these self-appointed guardians even aware that tomatoes were introduced from the New World and were considered poisonous for several years, or that pasta came originally from China?
9
@HKGuy Tomatoes came from the New World, yes, along with about 3/5 of all the vegetables and fruit consumed around the world. But, pasta did not originally come from China. That's a story made up in America in the 1930s. I'm sure these "guardians" are cognizant of food history, and we see this tendency across all immigrant communities in America; that is, this desire to be the arbiters of the authentic. Their effort is nothing special. They can take their seats among the snobbery. That said, most of what passes for Italian food in America is rather unfortunate.
7
@Antonio Pasta was brought to Italy by Marco Polo via China. Polo ventured to China in the time of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and the Chinese had been consuming noodles as early as 3000 B.C. in the Qinghai province.
4
@Eric T Pasta had been around in Italy (certainly in Sicily and Liguria) for a long time before Marco headed out to the Far East. This has been well established for decades since the rumor of Chinese origins first popped up in a 1930s US spaghetti ad.
11
It's said that the difference between a language and a dialect is that a language has a military but a dialect does not. So with food. Beyond regional differences (and in Italy these are significant for reasons of history and identity), I would wager that none of the restaurants acclaimed by the Accademia has its roots in cucina povera. Its opposite is baronial cuisine, an esoteric luxury niche hardly viable in the US (hence the recent closing of Monsu in Philly). But let the Accademia rate away for foodies who care about such things. What I learned as a first-generation child is that real Italians don't go to Italian restaurants. We cook at home.
29
@Lowell Absolutely right!
6
@Lowell
All their talk about "real Italian cuisine" is snobberism(sic).
Is this authentic Italian food?- from the menus of some restaurants they are praising:
"House cured salmon tartare with capers, shallots, avocado and horseradish dressing"
'Two poached eggs, smoked salmon on toasted bread topped with béarnaise sauce, served with mix greens and
rosemary potatoes "
6
The “Olive Garden “ mention was so appropriate. The criticism is shared by Italian-Americans from every region in Italy. I can’t stop laughing.
8
When I want Italian food, I don't seek it out in the U.S. It's a frustrating, disappointing waste of time. It's in Italy, and not in all "Italian" restaurants, BTW. In the States, the FDA has make it impossible to buy the essentials, beginning with cheese which is pasteurized into oblivion. We can come close, but it's not the same flavor. Go to Bologna.
12
"Sanctity of Italian food"?! -- Are we now into the Appenine foods blessed by the Vatican?
May the lovers of Italian food forgive me, but I dislike all the pasta and tomatoes added to it, either in the form of fruit or sauce.
2
The opening paragraphs of this article were so characterful and a joy to read. Kudos.
3
National cuisines transplanted to the U.S.A. inevitably undergo a transformation. Key ingredients may not be available in the new land, new ingredients are discovered as well as the regional ancestry of the immigrants impacts cooking.
The nations of Europe, Asia, South America have distinct culinary traditions within their countries. Then, the strong forces of American culture where customers except Chinese, Italian, Thai, Mexican restaurant food to be of a certain kind strongly skews the foods offered. Of course, restaurant owners cater to their customer’s preferences; they must to stay in business. But IMO, most of these adaptions aren’t appealing or healthy.
Personally, I like authenticity and seek it out but accept and often love the variations found in many of today’s ethnic dishes.
5
This reminds me of a story of an academic conference in Italy. At a dinner one night, one of the local professors said that the secret to enjoying delicious Italian food was - long pause as everyone at the table leaned in, eager to hear the answer - "to eat Italian food only in Italy." I love this story, because there is so much truth in it. For example, I like my pasta al dente, not al denture. Now that I know about this society, though, maybe I'll try an Italian restaurant in the US just one more time.
6
@murasaki
How about Italian food prepared by your mother or grandmother born in Italy? Because that is how many Italian Americans experienced Italian food. And it's been pretty amazing. Thanks, Ma!
7
Of course Italian cuisine will continue to evolve and so these people are indulging in an obsessive hobby. At least they get some wonderful meals from it!
PS - the risotto does look a touch overdone.
2
How did the Italian recipes from Italy begin. Cooks used the freshest produce and protein available to them and created their dishes. That is why there are such wide variations between north and south in Italy. What did the Italians do when they came to America? The same thing. The meats were abundant and cheap so they used them in their creations. So of course Italian American recipes are different from the home country. Which are better? That, of course, is subjective. It is an art, fine cooking, and individual tastes vary. Critique a restaurant for poor quality, I am all for it.Critique it for not being identical to the mother country ,that can creep into dogma which can blunt creativity. Is Olive Gardens terrible? Yes. But not because they don't follow rigid recipes.
15
When working in the printing business in Chicago one of the owners told of his wife returning from Italy, which she loved, but did not care for the food. Not enough heavy red sauce.
3
@cjc
When attending a German language school, The Goethe Institute in Radolfzell, Germany, many years ago, I ate, with all the other students, at an Italian restaurant.
To my horror, we were served Wienerschnitzel with "a heavy red sauce".
Oh dear!
I voiced an objection and the Italian staff were deeply offended and very defensive.
Alas!
I still remember the incident.
That was in 1967.
4
@cjc Anyone who's traveled in Italy, myself included, can testify that, outside of Naples, the pizza doesn't measure up to a New York slice.
3
@HKGuy
Oh my!
So now New York, and American tourists, set the standard for Italian food?
No way.
It is ITALIANS who set the true standard for Italian food.
Why not admit one really does not like real "Italian food".
Many years ago, I sighed in frustration during a meal in Italy because my Italian cousins and best friend were all nitpicking the entire experience. As an American, it drove me crazy. Who cares??!!
My friend told me something I have never forgotten. She said, "Well, that's the thing. You love Italy. You love our art, our food, our culture. It's far superior to what you find in the average American experience, right? But how do you think we get the best of everything?"
The constant critiquing of everything, the incessant judging is an essential part of how they raise standards so that they can enjoy a better quality of life than we do. Annoying, but effective.
24
For a profound insight into the rich variation in the wonderful food of Italy one could not do better than the exploration of Sicilian cooking by Mike Colameco with his "Sherpa" [leader in exploration] Melissa Muller who has written a fine book on the wide variations of Sicilian cooking.
According to Mike and Melissa there is no one true "Italian" cuisine. There is just a wonderful variety of different kinds of Italian cuisine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZeTl3xV7I
9
@Meta1 that's not really a terribly profound observation on their part. Cucina Italiana 101: it's regional and even provincial and even more so very local.
1
@Michael Fallai
Of course you are right about the "observation" part. If that were all, it would not be significant.
What impresses me is the fact that Mike and Melissa spend three programs traveling around Sicily filming the actual chefs working in their restaurant kitchens and individuals in their homes and they even go out to the suppliers of different kinds of Sicilian regional food.
Their program is an "up close and personal presentation.
It is not not an impersonal "Cucina Italiana 101".
Which, I agree, can be found anywhere in book stores or on TV.
Melissa even takes the viewer to the kitchens of her own family members making their unique versions of the food of Sicily.
Lol! Hold the red sauce. Hilarious. My Italian grandmother was a food wizard. I was fortunate to learn at her side. To this day I cannot replicate her subtle nuances which made her dishes memorable. For those of us who had Italian grandmothers, what would Sunday be without “gravy” and the many courses to follow.
I have been fortunate to take cooking courses with Italian chefs both in the US and Italy, but nothing will beat my grandmother.
30
@On the Ferry
My in-laws were Sicilian. Sicilian is the best!!!!!!
4
@On the Ferry The underlying read between the lines subtext of these people's mission is a mythical nationalistic purity, xenophobia and also racism. To them your grandmother wasn't really Italian. The question is, who are they to judge?
7
@bobbrum
My grandparents went back to Sicily, when my grandmother was pregnant with my father. When my father married an Irish girl, my grandmother told her to come to her apartment, and she would teach my mother how to make sauce. My mother showed up with a pencil and a pad of paper. My grandmother told her to put them away, and just watch!!!
15
This is a hilarious take-down, expressed in delightfully well-mannered terms. I'm sure the accademici won't get it but the joke is really on them. It's also a breathtaking example of the chasm between north and south that is at the heart of many of Italy's contemporary problems. It's really no wonder that la cucina del Mezzogiorno (the cuisines of Naples, Sicily, Puglia, Rome and the rest of the Italian south) is what has conquered the world. And there's nothing wrong with a risotto made with olive oil--although I agree that the green beans are misplaced. In Italy they would have been served on their own as a separate course, garnished with a little (perish forbid!) tomato, a whisper of garlic, and more of that great extra-virgin that's the heart of la cucina italiana.
44
@nancy harmon jenkins: Many Italians of the North consider everything south of Rome is Africa! This I've heard firsthand from Milanese, Fiorentine, et al. For my part, the cuisine of Sicily and Puglia is the best. However, I must admit that the Bistek Fiorentina, from the Chianina cattle is superb!
4
@Upstater that is all too true, what you have said about the north/south divide in Italy. Southern Italians have for so very long been considered and treated as the n-words of the country. These attitudes contributed not a little to the tremendous social unrest of the 60s and early 70s.
I hate to break this to you... while bistecca Fiorentina is indeed divine, quite frequently it's not actually Chianina beef. Just like olive oil, one must be vigilant if one wishes to have (and pay for) the real thing.
3
Am I the only one who finds the core of this exercise hollow? How might anyone make authentic Italian food without authentic Italian ingredients? From an Italian garden. From Italian seeds. Raised in Italian pastures, and breathing Italian air. This in an exercise in culinary onanism, and, while I applaud the effort, I am completely uninterested in the result.
But it is somehow wonderful that someone so devoted to the joys of cooking could so effortlessly assemble such clumsy analogies, such tone deaf sentences, as these. Boyfriend and girlfriend weddings; snoring string beans. Avanti!
33
There's nothing wrong with red sauce: tomatoes are used liberally in the cooking of Southern Italy, from Naples (the San Marzano variety is grown in the volcanic soil near Mt. Vesuvius) through Sicily. This group of self-appointed connoisseurs was originally Milan-based: Milanese cooking is as different from Neapolitan or Sicilian as New England cooking is from Creole/Cajun. For example, butter is used as much as or more than olive oil, chilies are shunned, and garlic used very sparingly.
For much of history, meat was an infrequent luxury for the average (impoverished) Sicilian, with vegetable dishes often given names associated with meat (e.g.,"caponata": capon=castrated rooster). For Northern Italians to give a thumbs-down to Southern Italian staples, and to insist that the latter isn't "real Italian", is presumptuous. (The late Northern-Italian Marcella Hazan was also guilty of this.)
In his classic non-fiction collection of essays "The Godfather papers and other confessions", Mario Puzo points out that, historically, the considerably poorer Southern Italians (who comprise the majority of Italian-Americans) were ruled, and oppressed, by Northern Italians: until the unification of Italy by Garibaldi in the late 19th century, the two didn't particularly see eye to eye. Puzo describes hilariously an episode of hate-at-first-sight between a Southern Italian-American author and a Northern Italian-American publisher.
63
@Prakash Nadkarni i love absolutely everything about your comment!
10
@Prakash Nadkarni
The same thought occurred to me: Was this just Northern Italian snobbishness toward Southern Italian cooking?
It would be a question that a New York resident familiar with the restaurants that received their highest ratings would be able to answer.
11
The whole idea of an "academy" is French, not Italian. It's hard to find two Italian cooks who will prepare a dish the same way--that's the joy of it.
34
@theresa Agree. I have just returned from my first trip to Italy. While in Venice, the antipasto I chose included or sometimes by itself, was sardines. Prepared slightly different at each establishment, sometimes in close proximity to each other. All a delight.
12
I live in Italy and let me just say that there are dishes in this country that are prepared according to very specific recipes. Deviation from the "true" version is not looked upon kindly. You might think Italians are easygoing about their cuisine, but nothing could be further from the truth.
22
@mrfreeze6
Well this makes sense because as an Italian american with a large clan, "easygoing" is not generally a word I would use to describe most Italians in general! (myself included). Although there are always exceptions. Italians often have exacting standards.
10
If they have not already dined at Basilico Inn on Staten Island, then they should. Magnifico!
2
Thank you for this article. With so many Italian restaurants to choose from, I'd be delighted to start with those the Accademia rates with an eight.
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@Dawn Helene I'd rather be delighted to eat at the Italian restaurants the Accademia doesn't deign give a rating.
23
How incredibly tedious and self important these people are. They would be doing a great disservice to Italian cuisine if anyone beyond their own navel gazing clique cared. Authenticity for authenticity's sake is ossification. Cultures are living and breathing and evolving things. Denying Italian cuisine the essential right to be expressed diversely is condemning it to death by stagnation. Good thing no one really cares what they think.
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@sp The height of pretension has to be: "Was the risotto cooked 30 seconds too long?" What next? It's good but it wasn't stirred in proper crazy eights to give it that classic silky texture with a Milanese bite. The yellow hue of the arborio is too anemic. The dish tastes like it wasn't prepared in Italian water.
These are the same people who frequent classical music concerts and make sure they cough between movements.
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@Harry Better they cough between movements rather than through the whole concert. I remember a summer concert at one of the smaller venues at Lincoln Center that sounded like it was happening in a TB ward.
15
@sp You reveal something about yourself by this comment.